I
At twenty-three o’clock that
night the Syrian priest went out to watch for the
coming of the messenger from Tiberias. Nearly
two hours previously he had heard the cry of the Russian
volor that plied from Damascus to Tiberias, and Tiberias
to Jerusalem, and even as it was the messenger was
a little late.
These were very primitive arrangements,
but Palestine was out of the world a slip
of useless country and it was necessary
for a man to ride from Tiberias to Nazareth each night
with papers from Cardinal Corkran to the Pope, and
to return with correspondence. It was a dangerous
task, and the members of the New Order who surrounded
the Cardinal undertook it by turns. In this manner
all matters for which the Pope’s personal attention
was required, and which were too long and not too urgent,
could be dealt with at leisure by him, and an answer
returned within the twenty-four hours.
It was a brilliant moonlit night.
The great golden shield was riding high above Thabor,
shedding its strange metallic light down the long
slopes and over the moor-like country that rose up
from before the house-door casting too
heavy black shadows that seemed far more concrete
and solid than the brilliant pale surfaces of the rock
slabs or even than the diamond flashes from the quartz
and crystal that here and there sparkled up the stony
pathway. Compared with this clear splendour,
the yellow light from the shuttered house seemed a
hot and tawdry thing; and the priest, leaning against
the door-post, his eyes alone alight in his dark face,
sank down at last with a kind of Eastern sensuousness
to bathe himself in the glory, and to spread his lean,
brown hands out to it.
This was a very simple man, in faith
as well as in life. For him there were neither
the ecstasies nor the desolations of his master.
It was an immense and solemn joy to him to live here
at the spot of God’s Incarnation and in attendance
upon His Vicar. As regarded the movements of
the world, he observed them as a man in a ship watches
the heaving of the waves far beneath. Of course
the world was restless, he half perceived, for, as
the Latin Doctor had said, all hearts were restless
until they found their rest in God. Quare fremuerunt
gentes?... Adversus Dominum, et adversus Christum
ejus! As to the end he was not greatly
concerned. It might well be that the ship would
be overwhelmed, but the moment of the catastrophe
would be the end of all things earthly. The gates
of hell shall not prevail: when Rome falls, the
world falls; and when the world falls, Christ is manifest
in power. For himself, he imagined that the end
was not far away. When he had named Megiddo this
afternoon it had been in his mind; to him it seemed
natural that at the consummation of all things Christ’s
Vicar should dwell at Nazareth where His King had
come on earth and that the Armageddon of
the Divine John should be within sight of the scene
where Christ had first taken His earthly sceptre and
should take it again. After all, it would not
be the first battle that Megiddo had seen. Israel
and Amalek had met here; Israel and Assyria; Sesostris
had ridden here and Sennacherib. Christian and
Turk had contended here, like Michael and Satan, over
the place where God’s Body had lain. As
to the exact method of that end, he had no clear views;
it would be a battle of some kind, and what field
could be found more evidently designed for that than
this huge flat circular plain of Esdraelon, twenty
miles across, sufficient to hold all the armies of
the earth in its embrace? To his view once more,
ignorant as he was of present statistics, the world
was divided into two large sections, Christians and
heathens, and he supposed them very much of a size.
Something would happen, troops would land at Khaifa,
they would stream southwards from Tiberias, Damascus
and remote Asia, northwards from Jerusalem, Egypt
and Africa; eastwards from Europe; westwards from
Asia again and the far-off Americas. And, surely,
the time could not be far away, for here was Christ’s
Vicar; and, as He Himself had said in His gospel of
the Advent, Ubicumque fuerit corpus, illie congregabuntur
et aquilae. Of more subtle interpretations of
prophecy he had no knowledge. For him words were
things, not merely labels upon ideas. What Christ
and St. Paul and St. John had said these
things were so. He had escaped, owing chiefly
to his isolation from the world, that vast expansion
of Ritschlian ideas that during the last century had
been responsible for the desertion by so many of any
intelligible creed. For others this had been the
supreme struggle the difficulty of decision
between the facts that words were not things, and
yet that the things they represented were in themselves
objective. But to this man, sitting now in the
moonlight, listening to the far-off tap of hoofs over
the hill as the messenger came up from Cana, faith
was as simple as an exact science. Here Gabriel
had descended on wide feathered wings from the Throne
of God set beyond the stars, the Holy Ghost had breathed
in a beam of ineffable light, the Word had become Flesh
as Mary folded her arms and bowed her head to the
decree of the Eternal. And here once more, he
thought, though it was no more than a guess yet
he thought that already the running of chariot-wheels
was audible the tumult of the hosts of
God gathering about the camp of the saints he
thought that already beyond the bars of the dark Gabriel
set to his lips the trumpet of doom and heaven was
astir. He might be wrong at this time, as others
had been wrong at other times, but neither he nor they
could be wrong for ever; there must some day be an
end to the patience of God, even though that patience
sprang from the eternity of His nature. He stood
up, as down the pale moonlit path a hundred yards away
came a pale figure of one who rode, with a leather
bag strapped to his girdle.
II
It would be about three o’clock
in the morning that the priest awoke in his little
mud-walled room next to that of the Holy Father’s,
and heard a footstep coming up the stairs. Last
evening he had left his master as usual beginning
to open the pile of letters arrived from Cardinal
Corkran, and himself had gone straight to his bed and
slept. He lay now a moment or two, still drowsy,
listening to the pad of feet, and an instant later
sat up abruptly, for a deliberate tap had sounded on
the door. Again it came; he sprang out of bed
in his long night-tunic, drew it up hastily in his
girdle, went to the door and opened it.
The Pope was standing there, with
a little lamp in one hand, for the dawn had scarcely
yet begun, and a paper in the other.
“I beg your pardon, Father;
but there is a message I must have sent at once to
his Eminence.”
Together they went out through the
Pope’s room, the priest, still half-blind with
sleep, passed up the stairs, and emerged into the clear
cold air of the upper roof. The Pope blew out
His lamp, and set it on the parapet.
“You will be cold, Father; fetch your cloak.”
“And you, Holiness?”
The other made a little gesture of
denial, and went across to the tiny temporary shed
where the wireless telegraphic instrument stood.
“Fetch your cloak, Father,”
He said again over His shoulder. “I will
ring up meanwhile.”
When the priest came back three minutes
later, in his slippers and cloak, carrying another
cloak also for his master, the Pope was still seated
at the table. He did not even move His head as
the other came up, but once more pressed on the lever
that, communicating with the twelve-foot pole that
rose through the pent-house overhead, shot out the
quivering energy through the eighty miles of glimmering
air that lay between Nazareth and Damascus.
This simple priest had scarcely even
by now become accustomed to this extraordinary device
invented a century ago and perfected through all those
years to this precise exactness that device
by which with the help of a stick, a bundle of wires,
and a box of wheels, something, at last established
to be at the root of all matter, if not at the very
root of physical life, spoke across the spaces of the
world to a tiny receiver tuned by a hair’s breadth
to the vibration with which it was set in relations.
The air was surprisingly cold, considering
the heat that had preceded and would follow it, and
the priest shivered a little as he stood clear of
the roof, and stared, now at the motionless figure
in the chair before him, now at the vast vault of
the sky passing, even as he looked, from a cold colourless
luminosity to a tender tint of yellow, as far away
beyond Thabor and Moab the dawn began to deepen.
From the village half-a-mile away arose the crowing
of a cock, thin and brazen as a trumpet; a dog barked
once and was silent again; and then, on a sudden,
a single stroke upon a bell hung in the roof recalled
him in an instant, and told him that his work was
to begin.
The Pope pressed the lever again at
the sound, twice, and then, after a pause, once more waited
a moment for an answer, and then when it came, rose
and signed to the priest to take his place.
The Syrian sat down, handing the extra
cloak to his master, and waited until the other had
settled Himself in a chair set in such a position at
the side of the table that the face of each was visible
to the other. Then he waited, with his brown
fingers poised above the row of keys, looking at the
other’s face as He arranged himself to speak.
That face, he thought, looking out from the hood,
seemed paler than ever in this cold light of dawn;
the black arched eyebrows accentuated this, and even
the steady lips, preparing to speak, seemed white and
bloodless. He had His paper in His hand, and
His eyes were fixed upon this.
“Make sure it is the Cardinal,” he said
abruptly.
The priest tapped off an enquiry,
and, with moving lips, raid off the printed message,
as like magic it precipitated itself on to the tall
white sheet of paper that faced him.
“It is his Eminence, Holiness,”
he said softly. “He is alone at the instrument.”
“Very well. Now then; begin.”
“We have received your Éminence’s
letter, and have noted the news.... It should
have been forwarded by telegraphy why was
that not done?”
The voice paused, and the priest who
had snapped off the message, more quickly than a man
could write it, read aloud the answer.
“’I did not understand
that it was urgent. I thought it was but one
more assault. I had intended to communicate more
so soon as I heard more."’
“Of course it was urgent,”
came the voice again in the deliberate intonation
that was used between these two in the case of messages
for transmission. “Remember that all news
of this kind is always urgent.”
“‘I will remember,’
read the priest. " `I regret my mistake.’”
“You tell us,” went on
the Pope, His eyes still downcast on the paper, “that
this measure is decided upon; you name only three authorities.
Give me, now, all the authorities you have, if you
have more.”
There was a moment’s pause.
Then the priest began to read off the names.
“Besides the three Cardinals
whose names I sent, the Archbishops of Thibet, Cairo,
Calcutta and Sydney have all asked if the news was
true, and for directions if it is true; besides others
whose names I can communicate if I may leave the table
for a moment.’”
“Do so,” said the Pope.
Again there was a pause. Then once more the names
began.
“’The Bishops of Bukarest,
the Marquesas Islands and Newfoundland. The Franciscans
in Japan, the Crutched Friars in Morocco, the Archbishops
of Manitoba and Portland, and the Cardinal-Archbisbop
of Pekin. I have despatched two members of Christ
Crucified to England.’”
“Tell us when the news first arrived, and how.”
“’I was called up to the
instrument yesterday evening at about twenty o’clock.
The Archbishop of Sydney was asking, through our station
at Bombay, whether the news was true. I replied
I had heard nothing of it. Within ten minutes
four more inquiries had come to the same effect; and
three minutes later Cardinal Ruspoli sent the positive
news from Turin. This was accompanied by a similar
message from Father Petrovski in Moscow. Then
’”
“Stop. Why did not Cardinal Dolgorovski
communicate it?”
“‘He did communicate it three hours later.’”
“Why not at once?”
“‘His Eminence had not heard it.’”
“Find out at what hour the news
reached Moscow not now, but within the
day.”
“‘I will.’”
“Go on, then.”
“’Cardinal Malpas communicated
it within five minutes of Cardinal Ruspoli, and the
rest of the inquiries arrived before midnight.
China reported it at twenty-three.’”
“Then when do you suppose the news was made
public?”
“’It was decided first
at the secret London conference, yesterday, at about
sixteen o’clock by our time. The Plenipotentiaries
appear to have signed it at that hour. After
that it was communicated to the world. It was
published here half an hour past midnight.’”
“Then Felsenburgh was in London?”
“’I am not yet sure.
Cardinal Malpas tells me that Felsenburgh gave his
provisional consent on the previous day.’”
“Very good. That is all you know, then?”
“’I was called up an hour
ago by Cardinal Ruspoli again. He tells me that
he fears a riot in Florence; it will be the first of
many revolutions, he says.’”
“Does he ask for anything?”
“‘Only for directions.’”
“Tell him that we send him the
Apostolic Benediction, and will forward directions
within the course of two hours. Select twelve
members of the Order for immediate service.”
“‘I will.’”
“Communicate that message also,
as soon as we have finished, to all the Sacred College,
and bid them communicate it with all discretion to
all metropolitans and bishops, that priests and people
may know that We bear them in our heart.”
“‘I will, Holiness.’”
“Tell them, finally, that We
had foreseen this long ago; that We commend them to
the Eternal Father without Whose Providence no sparrow
falls to the ground. Bid them be quiet and confident;
to do nothing, save confess their faith when they
are questioned. All other directions shall be
issued to their pastors immediately!”
“‘I will, Holiness.’”
There was again a pause.
The Pope had been speaking with the
utmost tranquillity as one in a dream. His eyes
were downcast upon the paper, His whole body as motionless
as an image. Yet to the priest who listened, despatching
the Latin messages, and reading aloud the replies,
it seemed, although so little intelligible news had
reached him, as if something very strange and great
was impending. There was the sense of a peculiar
strain in the air, and although he drew no deductions
from the fact that apparently the whole Catholic world
was in frantic communication with Damascus, yet he
remembered his meditations of the evening before as
he had waited for the messenger. It seemed as
if the powers of this world were contemplating one
more step with its nature he was not greatly
concerned.
The Pope spoke again in His natural voice.
“Father,” he said, “what
I am about to say now is as if I told it in confession.
You understand? Very well. Now begin.”
Then again the intonation began.
“Eminence. We shall say
mass of the Holy Ghost in one hour from now. At
the end of that time, you will cause that all the Sacred
College shall be in touch with yourself, and waiting
for our commands. This new decision is unlike
any that have preceded it. Surely you understand
that now. Two or three plans are in our mind,
yet We are not sure yet which it is that our Lord
intends. After mass We shall communicate to you
that which He shall show Us to be according to His
Will. We beg of you to say mass also, immediately,
for Our intention. Whatever must be done must
be done quickly. The matter of Cardinal Dolgorovski
you may leave until later. But we wish to hear
the result of your inquiries, especially in London,
before mid-day. Benedicat te Omnipotens Deus, Pater
et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus.”
“‘Amen!’” murmured the priest,
reading it from the sheet.
III
The little chapel in the house below
was scarcely more dignified than the other rooms.
Of ornaments, except those absolutely essential to
liturgy and devotion, there were none. In the
plaster of the walls were indented in slight relief
the fourteen stations of the Cross; a small stone
image of the Mother of God stood in a corner, with
an iron-work candlestick before it, and on the solid
uncarved stone altar, raised on a stone step, stood
six more iron candlesticks and an iron crucifix.
A tabernacle, also of iron, shrouded by linen curtains,
stood beneath the cross; a small stone slab projecting
from the wall served as a credence. There was
but one window, and this looked into the court, so
that the eyes of strangers might not penetrate.
It seemed to the Syrian priest as
he went about his business laying out the
vestments in the little sacristy that opened out at
one side of the altar, preparing the cruets and stripping
the covering from the altar-cloth that
even that slight work was wearying. There seemed
a certain oppression in the air. As to how far
that was the result of his broken rest he did not
know, but he feared that it was one more of those
scirocco days that threatened. That yellowish
tinge of dawn had not passed with the sun-rising;
even now, as he went noiselessly on his bare feet
between the predella and the prie-dieu where
the silent white figure was still motionless, he caught
now and again, above the roof across the tiny court,
a glimpse of that faint sand-tinged sky that was the
promise of beat and heaviness.
He finished at last, lighted the candles,
genuflected, and stood with bowed head waiting for
the Holy Father to rise from His knees. A servant’s
footstep sounded in the court, coming across to hear
mass, and simultaneously the Pope rose and went towards
the sacristy, where the red vestments of God who came
by fire were laid ready for the Sacrifice.
Silvester’s bearing at mass
was singularly unostentatious. He moved as swiftly
as any young priest, His voice was quite even and quite
low, and his pace neither rapid nor pompous.
According to tradition, He occupied half-an-hour ab
amictu ad amictum; and even in the tiny empty chapel
He observed to keep His eyes always downcast.
And yet this Syrian never served His mass without
a thrill of something resembling fear; it was not
only his knowledge of the awful dignity of this simple
celebrant; but, although he could not have expressed
it so, there was an aroma of an emotion about the
vestmented figure that affected him almost physically an
entire absence of self-consciousness, and in its place
the consciousness of some other Presence, a perfection
of manner even in the smallest details that could
only arise from absolute recollection. Even in
Rome in the old days it had been one of the sights
of Rome to see Father Franklin say mass; seminary
students on the eve of ordination were sent to that
sight to learn the perfect manner and method.
To-day all was as usual, but at the
Communion the priest looked up suddenly at the moment
when the Host had been consumed, with a half impression
that either a sound or a gesture had invited it; and,
as he looked, his heart began to beat thick and convulsive
at the base of his throat. Yet to the outward
eyes there was nothing unusual. The figure stood
there with bowed head, the chin resting on the tips
of the long fingers, the body absolutely upright,
and standing with that curious light poise as if no
weight rested upon the feet. But to the inner
sense something was apparent the Syrian could not
in the least formulate it to himself; but afterwards
he reflected that he had stared expecting some visible
or audible manifestation to take place. It was
an impression that might be described under the terms
of either light or sound; at any instant that delicate
vivid force, that to the eyes of the soul burned beneath
the red chasuble and the white alb, might have suddenly
welled outwards under the appearance of a gush of
radiant light rendering luminous not only the clear
brown flesh seen beneath the white hair, but the very
texture of the coarse, dead, stained stuffs that swathed
the rest of the body. Or it might have shown
itself in the strain of a long chord on strings or
wind, as if the mystical union of the dedicated soul
with the ineffable Godhead and Humanity of Jesus Christ
generated such a sound as ceaselessly flows out with
the river of life from beneath the Throne of the Lamb.
Or yet once more it might have declared itself under
the guise of a perfume the very essence
of distilled sweetness such a scent as
that which, streaming out through the gross tabernacle
of a saint’s body, is to those who observe it
as the breath of heavenly roses....
The moments passed in that hush of
purity and peace; sounds came and went outside, the
rattle of a cart far away, the sawing of the first
cicada in the coarse grass twenty yards away beyond
the wall; some one behind the priest was breathing
short and thick as under the pressure of an intolerable
emotion, and yet the figure stood there still, without
a movement or sway to break the carved motionlessness
of the alb-folds or the perfect poise of the white-shod
feet. When He moved at last to uncover the Precious
Blood, to lay His hands on the altar and adore, it
was as if a statue had stirred into life; to the server
it was very nearly as a shock.
Again, when the chalice was empty,
that first impression reasserted itself; the human
and the external died in the embrace of the Divine
and Invisible, and once more silence lived and glowed....
And again as the spiritual energy sank back again
into its origin, Silvester stretched out the chalice.
With knees that shook and eyes wide
in expectation, the priest rose, adored, and went
to the credence.
It was customary after the Pope’s
mass that the priest himself should offer the Sacrifice
in his presence, but to-day so soon as the vestments
had been laid one by one on the rough chest, Silvester
turned to the priest.
“Presently,” he said softly.
“Go up, father, at once to the roof, and tell
the Cardinal to be ready. I shall come in five
minutes.”
It was surely a scirocco-day, thought
the priest, as he came up on to the flat roof.
Overhead, instead of the clear blue proper to that
hour of the morning, lay a pale yellow sky darkening
even to brown at the horizon. Thabor, before
him, hung distant and sombre seen through the impalpable
atmosphere of sand, and across the plain, as he glanced
behind him, beyond the white streak of Nain nothing
was visible except the pale outline of the tops of
the hills against the sky. Even at this morning
hour, too, the air was hot and breathless, broken only
by the slow-stifling lift of the south-western breeze
that, blowing across countless miles of sand beyond
far-away Egypt, gathered up the heat of the huge waterless
continent and was pouring it, with scarcely a streak
of sea to soften its malignity, on this poor strip
of land. Carmel, too, as he turned again, was
swathed about its base with mist, half dry and half
damp, and above showed its long bull-head running out
defiantly against the western sky. The very table
as he touched it was dry and hot to the hand, by mid-day
the steel would be intolerable.
He pressed the lever, and waited;
pressed it again, and waited again. There came
the answering ring, and he tapped across the eighty
miles of air that his Éminence’s presence
was required at once. A minute or two passed,
and then, after another rap of the bell, a line flicked
out on the new white sheet.
“‘I am here. Is it his Holiness?’”
He felt a hand upon his shoulder,
and turned to see Silvester, hooded and in white,
behind his chair.
“Tell him yes. Ask him if there is further
news.”
The Pope went to the chair once more
and sat down, and a minute later the priest, with
growing excitement, read out the answer.
“’Inquiries are pouring
in. Many expect your Holiness to issue a challenge.
My secretaries have been occupied since four o’clock.
The anxiety is indescribable. Some are denying
that they have a Pope. Something must be done
at once.’”
“Is that all?” asked the Pope.
Again the priest read out the answer.
“’Yes and no. The news is true.
It will be inforced immediately. Unless a step
is taken immediately there will be widespread and
final apostasy.’”
“Very good,” murmured
the Pope, in his official voice. “Now listen
carefully, Eminence.” He was silent for
a moment, his fingers joined beneath his chin as just
now at mass. Then he spoke.
“We are about to place ourselves
unreservedly in the hands of God. Human prudence
must no longer restrain us. We command you then,
using all discretion that is possible, to communicate
these wishes of ours to the following persons under
the strictest secrecy, and to no others whatsoever.
And for this service you are to employ messengers,
taken from the Order of Christ Crucified, two for
each message, which is not to be committed to writing
in any form. The members of the Sacred College,
numbering twelve; the metropolitans and Patriarchs
through the entire world, numbering twenty-two; the
Generals of the Religious Orders: the Society
of Jesus, the Friars, the Monks Ordinary, and the
Monks Contemplative four. These persons, thirty-eight
in number, with the chaplain of your Eminence, who
shall act as notary, and my own who shall assist him,
and Ourself forty-one all told these
persons are to present themselves here at our palace
of Nazareth not later than the Eve of Pentecost.
We feel Ourselves unwilling to decide the steps necessary
to be taken with reference to the new decree, except
we first hear the counsel of our advisers, and give
them an opportunity of communicating freely one with
another. These words, as we have spoken them,
are to be forwarded to all those persons whom we have
named; and your Eminence will further inform them
that our deliberations will not occupy more than four
days.
“As regards the questions of
provisioning the council and all matters of that kind,
your Eminence will despatch to-day the chaplain of
whom we have spoken, who with my own chaplain will
at once set about preparations, and your Eminence
will yourself follow, appointing Father Marabout to
act in your absence, not later than four days hence.
“Finally, to all who have asked
explicit directions in the face of this new decree,
communicate this one sentence, and no more.
“Lose not your confidence
which hath a great reward. For yet a little while,
and, He that is to come will come and will not delay. Silvester
the Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God.”